UK business award for glue maker Beardow Adams

Beardow Adams, the UK-based manufacturer of hot melt adhesives, has won the 2008 South East Business Award for International Business, sponsored by UK Trade & Investment. The award, from the South East England Development Agency, was presented to Beardow Adams by Digby, Lord Jones, Minister of State for Trade and Industry.

It follows the company’s success in winning a fourth Queens’ Award: Enterprise for International Trade last year.

Beardow Adams is represented on five continents and has distributors in over 40 countries. Sales have grown by more than 600 percent in the last 15 years, over two-thirds of which now come from the company’s export activities.

Bob Adams, chairman and managing director said: ‘Our business operates across the whole spectrum of business endeavor – product development, manufacture, sales and marketing. The South East Business Award has allowed us to celebrate our international success in a very tough business environment.’

In his role as Minister for Trade and Investment, Lord Jones praised companies in the region for making his role of promoting the UK as a place to do business that much easier.  He said: ‘If there’s one region which really does lead the wealth creation of this nation, and without whom there would not be the prosperity that makes this the most successful economy in Europe, it’s you [the South East].’

Beardow Adams is the UK’s largest manufacturer of hot melt adhesives and among the top five such companies in Europe. The adhesives, developed and made at its Milton Keynes factory, are supplied to some 2,000 companies around the world. Among its customers are household names such as Coca Cola, Kellogg, Nestl and Unilever, who buy its hot melts for the packaging and labeling of food, pharmaceutical and health care products.